HALF-MEASURES

CANADA this week became the first country in the world to legalize the use
of marijuana for medicinal purposes. It is a decision that has made no one
happy and which advances the nation only a little towards the answer to
what the legal status of marijuana in general should be.

The regulations that surround the medicinal use of the drug are highly
restrictive in one sense. Terminally ill patients, such as those with AIDS,
will be able to obtain marijuana with a prescription signed by just one
doctor. For anyone else, it will require signatures from two doctors, who
will have to swear that all other means of alleviating pain have failed.

This procedure leaves medical-marijuana activists unhappy. Some argue that
the new law will, in fact, make it more difficult for them to obtain the
drug than it has been since recent court rulings affirmed their right to
take it.

In another sense, the regulations are not restrictive enough. Canadian
doctors are deeply unhappy about being saddled with the legal
responsibility of deciding who qualifies for a marijuana prescription and
who does not. They are equally unhappy about being given the opportunity to
prescribe a drug that has never gone through the testing process that all
other prescription drugs must pass. If they prescribe it, they are in
effect prescribing a drug with only anecdotal evidence of the benefit or
the harm it might cause.

Patients are unhappy, doctors are unhappy and recreational users of
marijuana are trying to figure out what symptoms they need to come up with
so they can go to their doctor's office instead of the illegal drug den of
their local dealer.

The general unhappiness is not surprising. The federal government appears
mightily reluctant to define what the general legal status of marijuana
should be. Its legal medical use was decided by the courts, which have also
shown an increasing reluctance to give criminal records to casual users of
the drug. Politicians may be waiting for the courts to decide the larger
issue for them as well, but that is not good enough. The message to the
government from an increasingly large section of the population is clear:
Address the issue quickly and bring before Parliament a clear and informed
bill that will set out a status for marijuana in this country that is
realistic, useful and which will let all marijuana users know where they stand.